Erica Lembke is a Professor in the Department of Special Education, a Senior Advisor for the National Center on Intensive Intervention, past-president of the national board of the Division for Learning Disabilities, and past editor of the journal Assessment for Effective Intervention. Recently she served as department chair for 5 years and interim dean for 1.5 years in the college.

Her research interests include helping support teachers in data-based decision making through designing and implementing Curriculum-Based Measures in elementary and secondary grades and developing strategies to improve elementary students’ literacy and mathematics performance. She is currently Principal Investigator on an IES grant to examine support for middle school mathematics, co-PI on an OSEP leadership grant, co-PI on an MTSS network grant funded through the US Dept. of Ed, and Co-PI on an EIR grant to study a replication of Fraction Face Off.

Steve Graham is a Regents and the Warner Professor in the Division of Leadership and Innovation in Teachers College. For 47 years he has studied how writing develops, how to teach it effectively, and how writing can be used to support reading and learning. His research involves typically developing writers and students with special needs in both elementary and secondary schools, with much of occurring in classrooms in urban schools.   Graham is the former editor of Exceptional Children, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Writing Research, Focus on Exceptional Children, and Journal of Educational Psychology. He is the co-author of the "Handbook of Writing Research," "Handbook of Learning Disabilities," "APA Handbook of Educational Psychology," "Writing Better," "Powerful Writing Strategies for all Students" and "Making the Writing Process Work." He is also the author of three influential Carnegie Corporation reports: Writing Next , Writing to Read , and Informing Writing.

Dr. Shawn Datchuk is a Professor of Special Education at the University of Iowa. Previously, he was the Director of the Iowa Reading Research Center, a K-12 special education teacher, elementary teacher, and academic director. He received his PhD in Special Education from Pennsylvania State University. He researches evidence-based methods to improve the writing and related literacy skills of K-12 students with and without disabilities. He has over 30 peer-reviewed publications, has delivered 70+ conference presentations, and has helped secure and manage over $16 million in federal and state funding. He serves on the editorial boards of eight peer-reviewed journals and is the chair of the research committee of the Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children.

Frank currently serves as a K-5 educational specialist in Sonoma County, California with a primary focus on intensive academic intervention. He has worked in public education for over 20 years across a variety of K-12 special education settings. He holds Bachelor’s Degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing, a Master’s Degree in Education, and is currently a doctoral student in the Reading Science program at Mount Saint Joseph University. In addition to formal education, he has also completed a wide variety of structured literacy training such as LETRS, thinkSRSD, Morningside Model of Generative Instruction, and Yoshimoto OG while also exploring a large variety of structured evidence-based intervention programs and assessment models throughout his career. Through both field work and the North Coast School of Education he has helped mentor other educators and strives to find ways to streamline best practice into the day-to-day classroom experience.